DR Congo’s powerful Catholic
Church says election results tallied by its observers do not match official
results announced on Thursday by the country’s election commission, which named
Felix Tshisekedi as the surprise winner.

In a pre-dawn announcement, the
election commission named Tshisekedi, son of the country’s late veteran
opposition leader, as provisional winner of the bitterly-contested December 30
vote – a surprise result his main opponent promptly denounced as an
“electoral coup”.

Just hours later, the Church said
election results tallied by its 40,000 observers scattered across the country
showed a different winner, without specifying who.

“We see that the result of
the presidential election as published by CENI (the electoral commission) does
not correspond with the data collected by our observer mission from polling
stations and counting centres,” said Father Donatien Nshole, spokesman for
the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO), which represents the
country’s Catholic bishops.

At stake is political stewardship
of the notoriously unstable central African nation which has never known a
peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960. Runner-up
Martin Fayulu, the pre-election favourite, said the results announced on
Thursday do “not reflect the truth of the ballots”, urging the Congolese to
“rise as one man to protect victory”.

In an unusually blunt comment on
a foreign election, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also waded into
the controversy, describing the results as “not consistent” with
observers’ reports. He added: “The Catholic Church of Congo did its tally
and announced completely different results.”

Last week CENCO called on the
election commission to publish results “in keeping with truth and
justice”, adding that data in its possession pointed to a clear winner. The
United States on Thursday demanded “clarification” over the result,
stopping short of recognising Tshisekedi as the winner.

“The National Independent
Electoral Commission has announced provisional results, but we await
clarification of questions which have been raised regarding the electoral count…
We urge all stakeholders to remain calm as the process continues,” State
Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

The last two elections in 2006
and 2011, both of which were won by incumbent Joseph Kabila, were marred by
bloodshed, and many fear a repeat of the violence if there is any sense the
result has been fixed.

The Catholic Church has long been
pressing for the departure of Kabila, who has ruled the country with an iron
fist since 2001 and who has stayed in power as caretaker leader even though his
second and final elected term ended in December 2016.